Synopsis

For young witches everywhere, the world-renowned witch Shiny Chariot reigns as the most revered and celebrated role model. But as the girls age, so do their opinions of her—now just the mention of Chariot would get a witch labeled a child. However, undeterred in her blind admiration for Chariot, ordinary girl Atsuko Kagari enrolls into Luna Nova Magical Academy, hoping to someday become just as mesmerizing as her idol.

However, the witch academy isn't all the fun and games Atsuko thought it would be: boring lectures, strict teachers, and students who mock Chariot plague the campus. Coupled with her own ineptness in magic, she's seen as little more than a rebel student. But when a chance finally presents itself to prove herself to her peers and teachers, she takes it, and now it's up to her to stop a rampaging dragon before it flattens the entire academy.

Background

Little Witch Academia is one of the four anime works that each received 38 million yen (about US$480,000) from the "2012 Young Animator Training Project." Just like in 2010 and 2011, the animation labor group received 214.5 million yen (US$2.65 million) from the Japanese government's Agency for Cultural Affairs, and it distributed most of those funds to studios who train young animators on-the-job.

Positive response to the movie led Studio Trigger to run a Kickstarter funding a sequel, which surpassed its funding goal.

Much like the creator of this little gold nugget, I'll be keeping this review short, but sweet.

Aside from Ryo, which I can't seem to find anywhere (if you happen to know a site, a link would be very helpful), I've seen all of the Anime Mirai 2013 films. All 4 are about half-an-hour long, so they're pretty concise with their story. Death Billiards is pretty good, but it feels a bit pretentious, shoving a little philosophical question down your throat but not really making you think that much. Arve Rezzle feels like the pilot to a full series, and as such offers very little closure,
but it has some nice ideas, even if those are undermined slightly by some rather half-baked characterisation and poorly executed exposition.

I'm giving my little mini reviews to the other episodes simply to give my review of Little Witch Academia some context. As someone with a rather cold demeanour, and who typically enjoys a dark thriller or gore-heavy action series, it may come across as somewhat surprising when I say that LWA is my favourite of the three. It's almost Disney-esque, with genuinely loveable and quirky characters, a strong and functional, if not particularly complex, story and a completely uplifting tone. The humour is solid and hits you enough to make even the most stoic individual smile a bit. The animation is brilliant, with the art differing just enough from the conventions of the Japanese style to make me completely fall in love with it. Voice-acting is probably my primary gripe, but it's not so bad that it distracts from the episode. It's fun, and reminds me of why I need to be less tolerant of those angsty action-thrillers like Arve Rezzle that seem to make up the meat of today's anime industry.

LWA is like Shrek. Far from being childish, this little gem is fun for everyone (though it doesn't share Shrek's gleeful love for sexual innuendo). Even if, like me, you've grown into an emotionally-jaded, highly critical badass, you may just find that Little Witch Academia has enough substance and upbeat tone to penetrate your doughy cynicism and really cheer you up.

I would genuinely rather they made a full series of this than Arve Rezzle.

Little Witch Academia is a standout anime, even though so far there is only one part and it is about 25 minutes long at this stage I would definitely consider this a masterpiece.

Instead of writing an essay about this i'm going to create a list of Positives and Negatives, I know when you're just looking to see if an anime is worth watching you usually don't want to read all that much.

Positives

- A short story which leaves room for expansion yet ties up the major loose ends and sticks to a three act structure incredibly well.
- The characters are all very different from each other,
none are stereotypical archetypes and each are likeable in their own way.
- The soundtrack is not something I noticed too much, but it was enough to create the correct atmosphere for the scenario's.
- The animation, I feel like this really needs to be stressed, by god the animation is amazing, everything is so smooth I think this might be the smoothest and most consistent animation i've ever seen.

Negatives
- Hard to think of many.
- The soundtrack wasn't extremely memorable, hardly much of a negative.

Like I said, it's very difficult for me personally to find faults in Little Witch Academia, I would recommend this to almost anyone and am certainly looking forward to the future of this project.

"Trigger saved anime." This is a phrase the anime community got to read a lot alongside Kill la Kill's airing until a little while. I'd go this far and say that Trigger DID save anime. But it had nothing to do with Kill la Kill. Read here why!

Actually, Little Witch Academia caught me by surprise. I didn't know Studio Trigger had something like that in stock and after I found out about this little gem I almost instantly decided to download it and oh boy was that a fine decision.

Reminder: This review will be spoiler free and I will refrain from going too deep into
happenings and just summarize it really, really quickly. We have the main heroine Akko Kagari. As a child she was attending a magic show featuring the witch Shiny Chariot who has become an idol for Akko. Even though she is not born into a magic family she attends the name giving magic school and is friends with Sucy and Lotte.

Let's split up this review into the five categories as usual:

Story (7/10):

There really isn't much I can say about a one episode anime with 25 minutes without coming up with a summary or spoilers. So let's just say that Little Witch Academia features a coherent plot. It features a look in the past of the main character and her motivations, parts of the everyday life at the academy and the interactions between multiple different characters. It's just one episode but felt concluded and not rushed by any means.

Art (7/10):

Since it has been Studio Trigger working on this it has this certain touch you instantly get out of it if you have watched Kill la Kill before. In general the backgrounds are very nice to look at, the animation is fluid, lightning looks gorgeous and the character models are full of variety in looks and facial animations. There is nothing to complain about here.

Sound (8/10):

As it is a single episode anime yet I would have never thought so much effort has been pumped into the soundtrack. It was outstanding and had a broad variety of different tunes to set the mood. I really loved that it consisted mostly of orchestral music. It just fitted so well.
Another part worth mentioning in the "Sound"-category is the voice acting. Trigger got really, really talented people on board for Little Witch Academia and it was a pure pleasure listening to them.

Character (8/10):

For a one-piece show they had a pretty adorable and varying cast reaching from the arrogant but talented witch with her two friends and the goofy main character as well as her sidekicks which would be a clumsy glasses girl and the superficially more introverted girl with the not-so-obvious but kickass abilities. All in all a very good cast of likeable characters.

Enjoyment (9/10):

I can't remember when it was the last time 25 minutes felt that short. It was over in almost an instant and had no dull moments. It was funny, suspenseful and full of quality. Pure entertainment!

Verdict (8/10*):

A very good anime. It is nice to see that projects like Little Witch Academia are such a success (600.000 clicks on YouTube according to Trigger). Also the second episode has been an insane hit on Kickstarter, fulfilling the 150.000$ mark in just one day. I can't wait for more.
It was fun all along. You shouldn't miss out on this enchanting tale! It's worth your very time and appreciation.

I just want to rate this special as a 10 to applaud the young animators on a job well done!
Your story goes like this a typical magical girl has aimed to become like her idol "Chariot" and this connects to the minds of our youth because you know we hold lots of dreams, ambitions, and imagination. So this special takes that and creates the opportunity to take this dream head on. Bits of comedy and adventure with a hint of wonder, i mean its about magical girls ;] The characters are all unique. Including the art, oh man the ART. The scenery if fabulous and
as for the character designs...gorgeous. I'd also like to add that the style changes from cartoon-y to normal to detailed in their faces to match the situation such as embarrassment or laughter. The main ones have different facial features so you can easily recognize them not only by their hair color. The music matched very well. Especially at parts that needed suspense ^^ I really enjoyed this special and it will go down as one of my favorites for now :>

Typical magical girl, so why now give this special a try? The special effects are pretty dramatic ^^

Been watching too much Berserk? Need something to brighten your day? Give one of these shows a whirl! Every anime on this list is guaranteed to put a smile on your face, even if you've just watched Grave of the Fireflies.